Budget cuts lead to 3500 job losses

Doreen Premdev|Published 1 year ago

Budget cuts have cost thousands of beneficiaries, who were part of thegovernment’s Public Employment Programme (PEP), to lose their jobs

More than 3000 people have lost their jobs due to ongoing government-wide budgetary constraints. The eThekwini Municipality has had to terminate the Public Employment Programme (PEP) due to the lack of funding. The programme was created to bring down the high rate of unemployment in the country and it was part of the presidential stimulus package.

PEP initiatives are publicly financed and government-implemented long-term investment programmes that directly create employment through productive activities with a high labour intensity. The programme targets individuals under the age of 56 – especially the youth and women.

With PEP in its third and final year of implementation, the budget for 2023/24 financial year was revised by National Treasury from the originally gazetted R263 million to R141 million. This significantly affected the municipality’s ability to retain the majority of beneficiaries, said eThekwini Municipality spokesperson, Gugu Sisilana.

“This is indeed a very disappointing development that is beyond the municipality’s control,” she said. “The programme has been a major success in terms of providing an income to the participants who joined when it started in the 2021/22 financial year. There are currently over 6000 beneficiaries who are part of the programme.”

Ms Sisilana said the municipality apologised to the 3541 affected beneficiaries whose services have been terminated. Their contribution to service delivery has been immense, she added. The employees only found out about the termination of services on Monday (October 9), when they reported for work. The workers were served with letters from the economic development and planning cluster.

“The municipality has been hard at work exploring various solutions to minimise the impact on beneficiaries. eThekwini will continue to explore all possibilities so that the programme can be resuscitated as soon as possible. This includes engaging with the National Treasury to request for additional budget,” said Ms Sisilana.

Letters sent to employees who lost their jobs on Monday read: “Efforts to extend the project beyond September 2023 have not been successful to date which leaves us with no other option but to suspend the projects driven by internal departments. We have requested departments to alert all beneficiaries under them not to report to work on Monday, October 9, until further notice.”

The workers are said to be paid for the days they have worked later this month.